Analogue-to-digital converters are usually electronic devices. Typically, an analogue-to-digital converter operates on an analogue input signal to convert it into a digital output signal. In other words, the analogue-to-digital converter may receive a continuous signal and convert it into a discrete signal. Analogue-to-digital converters may be used to convert an analogue signal from an analogue electronic device into a digital signal, so that the information contained within the analogue signal can be received by a digital electronic device.
One type of analog-to-digital converter is known as a successive approximation analogue-to-digital converter. Typically, a successive approximation analogue-to-digital converter converts a continuous analog signal into a corresponding discrete digital signal using a binary search. Specifically, the device may search through all possible quantization levels before finally converging upon a digital output which best matches the analogue signal.